Lucky Charms

I am the benchmark
I am evolution
I fight the fire with fire
Caffeine veins and stuffy noses
Nothing new under the sun
Meaningless changes
To the Lucky Charms in my bowl
Why the swirly moons?

You won't find better than me
Darling, rest assured
They won't love you like I did

This Dark Machine

I came unprepared for this undrinkable sea-water mixture of responsibility and still there it is, desire. Did I think I could wipe clean the slate that had driven me into the machine? I went in full of wonder and came out with all my bones broken. It was a fairground I went looking for I think, but what I found instead was the kind of one-and-a-half-sided Rubik’s-cube love story that made me profess, I’d rather take a closed-fist beating from him than ever live through that again. This dark machine surprised me, a carousel on fire like a phoenix, leaving no ashes for me to rise from, and I only had dripping wax wings to madly flap toward the sun with, and fall into the ocean, and sink, dragged by the weight of what could have been a lot of Yankee Candles. I always liked the buttercream one the best.

The World Was Lighter Than Eight Pounds

In that beeping, whirring factory, they set the weight of the world on my chest. The world was lighter than eight pounds. She was sighing in dreaming. The room, now shaking with exhaustion, was still anchored to the quaking earth by a solid reality, an air-solid reality, a new breath adding carbon dioxide to where stores of waiting life had just been. Perfection has been manifested here, the pain edged off by seventy five years of promise in my hands. Her big grey-blue eyes show me where to look. Her hand fits around my finger, points it toward the concrete above us. I know I must have never really loved before now, bleeding from our family ties, grateful even still that I was ripped open, open by a ray of sunshine that struggled to get out. The sky needed more sunshine more than it just needed more me.

Handfuls of Sunshine

From summer to autumn and autumn to winter, whenever I came across it, I would bring him little handfuls of sunshine. “Look what I found for you!” It was almost a daily occurrence. The dusty yellow would bleed into the grey air that he breathed. My excitement was always genuine. I was always trying to crack the code. How do you make someone love you? Some days he would smile. Some days he wouldn’t. Most days he would put me out. He always wanted to close the blinds.

Slowly, I learned that you can’t straighten enough hand towels or cook enough meals or apply enough coats of mascara to be good enough for anybody. You can’t write enough letters. You can’t strategize; love is not a chess game. You can’t simplify; love isn’t exactly checkers either. All you can do is expect the stars to come out every night. All you can do is expect the sun to rise every morning. You can breathe in, you can breathe out. You can take some of your sunshine and begin to keep it for yourself.

Maybe everything that I did was wrong. Maybe it wasn’t sunshine that he needed anyway. Maybe it’s better that we’re free from each other.

I can’t believe all that yet. My hands are still heavy-laden with the light I wanted to share with him. But maybe someday I will believe it. Maybe someday it won’t be so hard.

After the Storm

I look out over what’s left of us. Everything thrown back and into the wind by the storm. The valuables are shattered. The love letters are beyond repair. I’m digging through water-logged possessions in desperation. Is not one thing salvageable?

 “I tried to save it,” I hear myself say. “I tried, I tried, I tried. But it’s ruined.”

I look out over what’s left of us. Everything thrown back and into the wind by the storm. My skin crawls with bedbug lies. I sleep covered in six-legged nightmares. Everywhere I go, I feel them following in my shadow. Is not one place safe?

“I can’t live like this,” I hear myself say. “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t. I will die.”

I look out over what’s left of us. Everything thrown up and into my lap by the storm. The pictures disintegrating in soppy, Technicolor rainwater. The ceiling dripping into my hopeless, clean hands. His hands are covered in blood.

“I love him,” I hear myself say. I feel myself shake with the thick silence that follows, the silence that says, But it doesn’t matter.

I look out over what’s left of us. I reach for the doorknob. The light is blinding. He doesn’t follow me. I walk away from his flood alone.